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Thursday, March 20, 2014

Lazy Latte Log: Abraço Espresso

TL;DR: ★★★★☆

Very good but definitely not the best.

Piccolo latte with latte art that I accidentally messed up...oops

(7th St. & 1st Ave.)

Abraço had been on my list of coffee shops to try for a while, and I finally got a taste of their piccolo latte today. I came to this tiny, tiny space — no seating inside, only a bar for leaning, and a small two-person bench outside — around noon, and it was packed ... aka there were like five people.

I was originally gonna go for a regular latte with skim, but they unfortunately only had whole milk, which I usually can't handle due to its high fat content and strong flavor. So I asked for it with less milk than usual (which might've been a dumb, coffee-noob question now that I think about it), and the baristas suggested the piccolo — a caffe macchiato with a more even ratio of milk to espresso — which was just right for me.

This dinky cup set me back $3.50, but I wasn't too mad about it — had they not run out of skim, I probably would've gone for the $4 full-sized latte. However, for some reason, I wasn't too impressed by this drink. Sure, it was velvety smooth with an earthy tone, but there was no wow factor to it. I think it's because of the bland flavor — funny since I was just disappointed about Third Rail's latte last week because it was too bitter, but this one was surely a tad too milky for my taste. A little more depth of flavor from the espresso would've been nice.

That being said, I still want to come back because apparently their olive oil cake is bomb.com. And I'm curious about their latte with skim.